perfidy

The Reverend Horton Heat - Revival (Yep Roc, 2004)

Over the course of fifteen years, the Reverend Horton Heat has explored every possible variation on rockabilly punk. This means that, like the Ramones, when you buy one of his records you pretty much know what you're going to get - a dozen or so loud songs about cars, drinking, women, and kicking ass. When you do one thing for so long, the only way to remain vital is to begin digging deeper. For The Reverend Horton Heat, this means drawing on his new found maturity: in the last few years, he has lost his mother, lost a friend to heroin, and had a new baby. For the first time his life experiences inform his music.

Although his new album Revival, (2004, Yep Roc Records) kicks off with the now-obligatory fast guitar instrumental that starts most of his records (this one called "The Happy Camper"), the very next song is a bewildered and heartsick lament that he's still alive but not happier (“I've done my share of stupid things, I regret to say / And whatever I may do now, time may not repay / I'm just looking for revival, today may be the day”). Unlike in the past, where his "tragedy" songs were done with tongue firmly in cheek, now Heath is delivering the goods for real. It is a matter of degree, but for the first time a Reverend Horton Heat song hits close to home. However, lest you think the good Reverend has gone all emo on us, he follows right up with "Calling In Twisted," a little ditty about using “the fake cough" when calling off work.

For those among you who have not been initiated into the secrets of the Heat, The Reverend Horton Heat is James Heath of Texas, the tattoed guitar slinger at the vanguard of the punkabilly movement since 1991. Author of classic songs like "I Like Steak," "Bales of Cocaine," "Livin' on the Edge (of Houston)," "Nurture My Pig," "It's Martini Time" and "Big Sky," Heath has been touring constantly for years, bringing his mix of hepped up rockabilly, punk, and sleazy greaser attitude to audiences around the world.

In his early days he was taken under the wing of heavies like Gibby Haynes (who produced 1993's The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat) and Al Jourgenson (who produced 1994's Liquor in the Front). He has sinced moved on to an ongoing relationship with veteran producer Ed Stasium. Although albums helmed by Stasium typically sound like they were recorded on one microphone in a parking garage, in the case of the Reverend this actually works, since Stasium's simple bass-drums-guitar-plenty o' reverb setup gives added dimension to the band's attack.

Despite the discovery of these heretofore unsuspected depths to Jim Heath's psyche, Revival is still vintage Heat. He still plays guitar like a demon, spraying notes like a firehose over top of Jimbo Jones’ slap bass and Scott Churilla’s metalbilly drumming. As usual the Reverend raises a respectable ruckus, and as usual by song number fifteen the well has run a little dry. The newfound depths suit him well, but for all its strengths, Revival is less consistent than some of his older albums. If you’re a fan, it’s worth having, but if you are new to the Rev, there is no beating the manic punch of The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat. Kudos to Yep Roc for landing the Reverend, but if they have another record in the contract, next time their A&R department should hold the Rev to a dozen great songs total.

yeproc.com

Herbie Hancock - VSOP: Live Under The Sky (Columbia Legacy, 2004)

The 1970s were a funny time for jazz. Even as jazz musicians broke new ground and some rock audiences embraced jazz fusion, the market for straight acoustic jazz was withering away to nothing. In a way it makes perfect sense. The best jazz fusion-- Weather Report, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, even Miles Davis' cocaine-fueled funk-rock tirades-- were aimed explicitly at a consumer audience with ears for electronic sounds and straight 4x4 rhythms. On the other hand, acoustic jazz in the 1970s was in general a distinctly post-everything affair. All the old movements had run their course or had gone back underground, and there wasn't much development going on to keep casual jazz fans from putting on a Sly Stone record instead.

Naturally, this state of affairs led to some very fine music being made and immediately filed away without release. Columbia Legacy (an appendage of Sony) has begun pulling out some of these old never-weres and finally giving them a US release. Even if the jazz audience in 2005 is just as small and far more fickle than in 1977, Columbia/Legacy's new-old releases show us that looking backward sometimes means finding out just how much we missed the first time around.

VSOP was an on-again off-again supergroup consisting of the four backing members of Miles Davis' second quintet. Without Davis to guide (dominate) them, Herbie Hancock became the de facto leader of a quartet that also included Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, and the ubiquitous Ron Carter on bass. The group toured and recorded in 1977, then reconvened every so often through the early 1980s. They were big in Japan, their domestic popularity crippled by accusations from the jazz establishment that their fusion experiments had desecrated the hallowed legacy of jazz itself.

VSOP recorded the double live album VSOP: Live Under The Sky direct to digital tape over two nights in Japan in 1979 in front of an enthusiastic audience, with each night’s (identical) set included in full. Living up to the great 70s tradition of killer double live records (see: Frampton, KISS, Queen, Zappa), Live Under the Sky is a world-beater, a stunning, white hot, smack-your-mother tour de force of post-everything acoustic jazz.

A clue to how the album is going to unfold comes when the band bites into the opening "Eye of the Hurricane" at about 260 beats per minute. Within 90 seconds drummer Tony Williams is beating the brains out of young Freddie Hubbard. I mean, beating the brains out of him. Leaving Ron Carter to provide the bedrock rhythm, Williams breaks into a dizzying array of pounding fills, kicks, cross-rhythms and subthemes beneath (and over top of) Hubbard's solo, putting the young trumpet player on notice that he better bring it and good. Hubbard responds with a solo of dizzying virtuosity, repaying Williams in kind. Throughout the number Williams spars with his bandmates, completely abandoning the beat under Hancock's solo in favor of a barrage of rhythmic commentary on Hancock's playing. The resulting musical dogfight finally resolves with both Hancock and Willams dropping out to let Carter walk the bass for a minute before the whole band comes back to the head, finally laying out into the serene and beautiful next selection, "Tear Drop.” For the next hour, the entire band tear into song after song with boundless creativity and power.

Lest I give you the impression that the entire record consists of two discs of musical ultimate fighting deathmatches, I must hasten to mention that about half the selections are cool downtempo meditations. More than just breaks to allow us and the musicians to catch their breaths, beautifully rendered performances of "Tear Drop," "Para Oriente" and others find the group exploring textures, harmonies and intensities of emotion in ways that frantic workouts just won't allow.

There is something mind-boggling about listening to four (five) players among the greatest of all time leaving behind all the rules and just playing whatever feels right in the moment. With nods to everything - bop, modal jazz, cool jazz, Mingus-style third stream suites, free blowing a la Ornette Coleman, the group move in and out of song structures, extending, reiterating, and demolishing at will. Interestingly, the extended post-bop VSOP are doing here is the stylistic exact opposite of what most of its members were pursuing in their day jobs. The Headhunters (Hancock) and Weather Report (Shorter) were exploring space, extended funk jams and newfangled electronics, and Williams was recording noisy jazz-punk with Ronnie Montrose. By way of contrast, VSOP relied on the tried and true devices of acoustic instruments and bop harmonies. Live Under The Sky comes on like a Cassius Clay uppercut. A thrilling, breathtaking, incredible live set from five players in perfect tune.

Herbie Hancock's recorded output is both extensive and spotty, and it can be difficult for someone just getting acquainted with his work to know quite where to begin. Both VSOP: Live Under The Sky and its Columbia/Legacy partner release The Piano deserve a place on every jazz fan's shelf as major contributions not only to the work of one the greatest living keyboardists but to the state of the art of jazz.

www.columbialegacy.com
www.herbiehancock.com

This post also appears at blogcritics.org. Blogcritics.org is clinically proven to prevent heart disease, the staggers, dropsy, and aftosa.*

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy is not clinically proven to prevent heart disease, the staggers, dropsy, or aftosa.

Herbie Hancock - The Piano (Columbia/Legacy, 2004)

Herbie Hancock was a very busy man in the late 1970s, and he was doing it all for the love of the music. Although his flagship project, the Headhunters, were meeting with worldwide success, his other projects were less well received. His work with the VSOP quartet was released mainly in Japan, as was his 1977 solo piano recording The Piano. Thanks to a renewed interest in quality jazz music regardless of when it was recorded, Columbia Legacy (an appendage of Sony) is now giving a number of excellent lost albums their first US release.

Originally intended for release only in Japan thanks to limited interest in acoustic jazz at home, 1977's The Piano is a sort of counterpart to Hancock’s turbulent post-bop work with VSOP and the electronic funk of the Headhunters. One of the first albums to be recorded digitally, Hancock intended The Piano as a sort of homage to the way records were made in the early days of jazz. For this album, he used a technique called direct-to-disc, in which the player or players choose three or four songs totalling the length of an LP side (in this case 16 minutes) and then play them live consecutively, leaving enough space between each selection to allow for a good spiral groove to separate them.

In this case, Hancock selected for side one three songs closely associated with Miles Davis; “My Funny Valentine,” “On Green Dolphin Street,” and “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and for side two four original compositions. Playing alone, Hancock ran through each of the seven songs in sequence three times and made an album out of the best overall take. Although reminiscent in a way of Bill Evans' landmark triple-overdubbed solo piano album Conversations With Myself, Hancock’s aim is very different – here the conversations are monologues and silence is an instrument.

Displaying the sensitive touch and harmonic ear he is known for, Hancock deconstructs his selections and pensively turns them inside out, searching for their emotional core. Moving far beyond jazz and the lounge-piano cliches that come so easily on the standards chosen, Hancock turns "My Funny Valentine" into a study in Romantic-era harmony, sounding more like French composers Erik Satie or Maurice Ravel than Miles Davis or Bill Evans. Part of this is due to the extended chords Hancock chooses, painting sheets of suspended notes over chords and decorating his melody with sotto voce runs and fills.

Hancock give each selection a similar treatment, turning each one into a perfect little jewelbox of gorgeous and brilliant playing. Like a Japanese painting done on the thinnest of papers with the fewest possible strokes of a brush, The Piano is an expressively minimalist exercise in taste and restraint. Moreover, that it comes from the same man who was in the same period wrangling a synthesizer in the Headhunters and sparring with VSOP is positively stunning and a little unbelievable.

Herbie Hancock's recorded output is both extensive and spotty, and it can be difficult for someone just getting acquainted with his work to know quite where to begin. Both The Piano and its Columbia/Legacy partner release VSOP: Live Under The Sky deserve a place on every jazz fan's shelf as major contributions not only to the work of one the greatest living keyboardists but to the state of the art of jazz.

www.columbialegacy.com
www.herbiehancock.com

This post also appears at blogcritics.org. Blogcritics.org: providing you with the best in bloviation and media punditry since 1323.

I have been enjoying the Ministry's winter hiatus, what with its replacement by all-new episodes of The Johno Experience. But with Johno still grappling with his Dickensian illness, I can't expect him to carry the whole weight of perfidy.org by himself. So here's a lame post, just for the sake of Johno getting a nap.

First of all, being the real supabad cat he is, I can't accept Johno's illness with its current 19th century flava; might as well go to the corner barber for a shave and a leech treatment with a condition that sounds like that. I recommend rebranding his illness to better reflect the look and feel of his trademarks. Go with "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis" for now; if Clinton raises a stink, pacify him with crack.

Second, the thrust of my post.

I've had this job for over four years now, most of it with the same computer. And my iTunes library is starting to show it. Now, up until about two weeks ago I just played whole albums, typically one or two per day. Then I hit "random" accidentally. Every stereo I've owned in the past exhibited some sort of preference, whether for a certain song or, in the case of multi-disc changers, certain records. Seemingly, Macs are no different in this regard. Here's what I've learned so far:

In any given work period, I WILL hear "Shakin' Street" by the MC5.

This machine really digs the Minutemen. Way more than I do, actually, and has a penchant for "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs".

There is alot of Metallica here. All of it, in fact, except for "Kill 'Em All". There is enough selected at random to make sense but, what are selected, by a ratio of roughly 3:1, are covers by Metallica, not originals.

Since I began paying attention to this random play I have not heard a Stooges song, but have "Fun House", "The Stooges", and "Raw Power" all in there. Nor is it a fan of Black Sabbath or Art Blakey.

About once every two days I'll hear Mahavishnu Orchestra, but ONLY a selection from the first half of "Birds of Fire", and only once.

I have about 60 Otis Redding tracks and maybe 50 Rage Against the Machine tracks, but any of the 12 Count Basie/Joe Williams numbers outplays the others by at least 3:1.

If it's going to play either Lou Reed OR David Bowie, it's never before 12 and solely live material.

This computer doesn't mind metal, and will take Slayer over any other fucking metal in the library. Metal!

This study will continue indefinitely; further updates as events warrant.

Leave it to the Brits. Although us Amurricans sprung from them like grey-eyed Athena from the forehead of Zeus (unlike the Australians, who are more like King Erechthetus, springing from the seed spilled when Hephaestus humped Athena's leg), they are not like us. Separated by more than a common language, we are now two peoples of very different sensibilities.

This fact was hammered home to me once while reading Jon Savage's history of the Sex Pistols, England's Dreaming. In the book, Savage quoted an MP who was trying to get a bill through Parliament banning the Pistols outright, arguing (I paraphrase) "It is their right to do what they want, and it is our right to try and stop them." If there is any quote that sums up better the fundamental difference between the United States' and Britain's social compacts, I don't know about it.

Anyway. I bring all this up by way of mentioning an amusing and deeply disturbing development in British crimefighting that further underlines the differences between American and British mentalities. As you know, English police patrol the streets armed only with truncheons and a stern pointy-finger, though of course armed response waits in abeyance to spring to aid if needed. Since England banned private ownership of guns outright a couple years ago, there is every indication that they as a society are genuinely dedicated to exploring more nonlethal, less conventional means for catching criminals.

Whether or not this is a good idea is up to you. Opinions are opinions. However, it is impossible to deny that the English have grown creative in seeking out new nonlethal crimefighting technologies to help them in this task. The same culture that gave us the bizarre and psychedelic series "The Prisoner" has now made good on that show's bizarre promise. Witness: a roving black robotic ball that, once it detects a target via infrared, can chase intruders through snow, mud, or water at up to 20 mph, all the while snapping photos and summoning backup, making the device ideal for unmanned perimeter and zone patrols. The article notes that "[w]hile the current version can only raise the alarm, it could be adapted to corner an intruder if the customer wanted," and hold them until the men in the funny suits come and return them to the island.

Southern Culture on the Skids are one of those bands who always seem to be punching above their weight. Certain groups' stardom, in retrospect, has an air of inevitability about it. U2 are the biggest band in the world, and it's practically impossible to imagine that under different circumstances of taste and timing, The Joshua Tree and War could be practically unknown masterpieces, circulating quietly among music collectors with a quiet fervor today reserved for test pressings of legendary Sun Ra sides and the like. Elvis Presley is so encoded in the DNA of pop music that his obscurity is literally impossible to imagine.

Not so with North Carolina stalwarts Southern Culture on the Skids. First of all, their goals are more modest. They don't do pop anthems or minutely crafted gems of timeless style. They are a party band who have survived through twenty years, eight albums plus an EP, and a couple label shifts, all the while sticking true to a fairly limited set of dependable tricks. These days, SCOTS sound a bit like the B-52s with less camp and more competence (and if you happen to think that this means they're missing all of what made the B-52s great, well then that's your own opinion), or like the Cramps' college-bound younger sibling. Last year they released their eighth LP, Mojo Box, on Yep-Roc Records. I will say this: fans of surf-rock, Southern college town party music, psychobilly, or twisted garage country owe it to themselves to own one Southern Culture on the Skids record. But is this the one?

My personal favorite high point in SCOTS' career came on 1996's Dirt Track Date (DGC). It was the left-field radio single “Camel Walk,” in which lead singer Rick Miller exhorted us in a laconic twang to “walk... like a camel” that got me. “Camel Walk” was a loopy slice of off-kilter rockabilly that lurched and heaved along with a sideways smile, achieving in the process half-accidental greatness. Although it is unfair to measure a group against one three-minute thing they did ten years ago, I can't help it. Either SCOTS have another “Camel Walk” in them or they don't.

All of the foregoing certainly reads as though I were winding up to chuck Mojo Box into the nearest river and to trash Southern Culture on the Skids as pale imitations of imitations, ten years past their sell-by date. The funny thing is, I'm not. In spite of their fixation on songs about trailer parks and country livin', in spite of the jokey/hokey aspects of their two-chord surfabilly sound, in spite of the fact that my CD collection has literally dozens of golden-age rockabilly selections that sound a lot like what Southern Culture on the Skids are doing in a more mannered and therefore less inherently fascinating way-- in spite of all this, Mojo Box is a truckload of fun. On their last few albums the band seemed to have lost focus, relying on gimmicky novelty songs to carry them through. By way of contrast, Mojo Box represents a return to form: a lean, dandy album of greasy stomps, twangy guitars, and good songs. That they have figured out how to do this again after ten years in the (more or less) wilderness is only a plus, as they are older, smarter, and better at what they do.

There's something to be said for a band who know what they want and how to get it, even when that something is to make har-har party records to drink beer, eat fried chicken, and drive fast to. Even if Mojo Box lacks anything quite as perfectly nutty as “Camel Walk,” the happytime twang of “Smiley Yeah Yeah Yeah,” the greasy, slinking “'69 El Camino,” the plaintive balladry of “Where Is The Moon,” and bassist Mary Huff's lead vocals on “Soulful Garage” make it all up. They can play, they can sing, they can write, and they can raise a Friday-night ruckus. Although hemmed in by their down-home conceits and the inherent limitations of the college town surf-rockabilly genre they inhabit, SCOTS manage to turn in thirteen entertaining, energetic performances that never resort to cliche for simple lack of good ideas.

So is this the one to get? Well... sure. It’s better than their last couple of records and has held up through more than a dozen runs through my auto-repeater, so I know Southern Culture on the Skids built Mojo Box to last. I have to put in a strong word for Dirt Track Date as well, partly because it contains all their early favorites in rerecorded form, making it a sort of midcareer greatest hits, but Mojo Box stacks up favorably, making a case that another time and place, Southern Culture on the Skids could have been as beloved as the King himself (or at least the B-52s, or Sleepy LaBeef, or Carl Perkins).

www.yeproc.com

This post also appears at blogcritics.org. Blogcritics.org is clinically proven to build healthy teeth and bones.*

*Blogcritics.org is not clinically proven to build healthy teeth and bones.

Jazz organ giant Jimmy Smith is dead. Eric Olsen at Blogcritics (linked) has the obit. This one hurts me a lot, actually. I have spent hours and hours listening to Jimmy's records and playing along on the bass. His footwork was funky, tight, and groovy, and my ability to dig a deep groove owes in large part to him. Man... and I was still hoping to see him live.

taking control of the Democratic party, throwing it so far to the left it's almost antipodean. That damn Howard Dean, that filthy pinko, that usurper of power, that MoveOn-powered moonbat hijacker of the minority voice. That filthy pro-Second-Amendment fiscally conservative Gingrich-admiring cool-on-Clinton state's righter pinko is going to take the Democratic party to its doom with his Berkeley love-ins and his hairy-legged birkenstocked sensitivity advisors. Its doom, I tell you! Its doom!

My ass.

It depends on which ten days you look at!

If any of us tried this, the IRS would hit us so hard our granchildren would feel it. Our Fearless Leader's Fiscally Prudent And Unassailably Conservative Medicare plan will now cost north of One... Trillion... Dollars all told. In case you're confused, $1.2 Trillion is more than $720 Billion, which is another estimate, which is bigger in turn than the $400 Billion that we were all told - and none of us ever believed - the program would cost in the first place.

So how'd they do it? Simple! They lied!

When the Medicare bill was passed, the Congressional Budget Office said the cost would not exceed $400 billion over 10 years. In a letter to The New York Times published on Nov. 20, 2003, Thomas A. Scully, who was then the Medicare administrator, wrote, "We are spending $400 billion."

Just two months later, in January 2004, the White House said the cost, for the same 10-year period, would be $534 billion.

Dr. McClellan said Tuesday that "there has been no significant change in the cost of the drug benefit" for the years 2006 to 2013. But, he said, the new estimate covers two additional years, 2014 and 2015, when Medicare enrollment will be larger and drug prices will be higher. In 2015 alone, he said, Medicare will spend well over $100 billion on the drug benefit.

Assumptions about the cost of the Medicare drug benefit were included in the budget that Mr. Bush unveiled on Monday. A table in one volume of the budget, titled "Analytical Perspectives," shows the drug benefit as costing $345 billion from 2005 to 2010.

Lawmakers said they were shocked to see that number because it was close to the $400 billion figure they had previously been given as the price tag for a full decade. Estimates prepared by the chief Medicare actuary show that the spending for the prescription drug benefit will total $1.2 trillion from 2006 to 2015, before taking account of income that will offset some of that cost.

The best part of the foregoing is the ludicrous misdirection employed to sell the plan. See, the original estimate was from 2004-2013, which is in fact a ten year period - just not a ten year period in which the bill takes effect. The new new estimates cover the years 2006-2015, ten years in which the bill will be fully funded and the Giant Money Hoover fully operational. See how it works? Costs + Timeshift = Big Big Savings!

Let's say my car costs $10000, payable in monthly installments over five years.(Actually, it would cost me plenty more than that with interest factored in, but interest is haaaaaard so I will leave it aside for now.) If I say my car will cost me $10000 over five years, I can't just save some money by picking a random five-year window and computing the cost then (My car cost me $0 - free! - from 1888-1893). But the car is not free, and that $10000 is still due in a very real and binding sense, if I am going to continue having the dual pleasures of a car and a sound credit history. There's no getting around it. And yet, picking a time series at random seems to be good enough for government accounting.

I wonder if I could try this the next time I get audited. "Yes sir, I did make $0 last year. I only counted the hours from midnight-6 AM, and I made no money during that time. Why - is that a problem?"

[wik] Not to harp on this but... if these are the kinds of 'facts' that entered into the Bush administration's policy planning of Medicare reform, what other 'facts' are attached to other initiatives? Not that every President doesn't do it, but I seem to recall myself carping about the same tactic when Clinton used it, and Bush I before him. Before that, I only cared about GI Joe, rock guitar, and homework.

Don't move back to Virginia.

No disrespect to Buckethead, Ross, my wife's family, or the beautiful city of Alexandria, but I can't live somewhere where I can't wear my pants how I want, no matter how low or tacky. Oh, also the gay thing. Hey... both are the state's decision and rightly so... but...